WalMart mentality.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Like most of the American buying public, I occasionally find myself at Wally World. Home of Low Prices. Local distributor for Price Rollbacks. Second home for most parole officers.

Sorry…

I despise the place. I hate it. I hate Walmart, I hate its “you can find almost exactly what you want” mentality, I hate its customers.

Customers. That’s a laugh. Vandals would be more like it.

This past spring I was shopping in a WalMart in Clewiston Florida. It wasn’t my idea, but without driving an hour to get to civilization, there was no other choice. I parked my truck as far from the doors as was practical. (It’s been my experience that a lot less bad things happen if you DON’T park near the front door.) After buying what I needed, I returned to the truck, jump in, fired her up, and backed out of the parking place – right over the shopping cart that someone had so carefully hidden behind the truck. The cart flipped, and the truck hopped up on the cart before I could get onto the brakes, snagging it. I was livid. Some person (a very large woman of minority descent) had walked the length of the parking lot, shopped, returned to her car, and then wouldn’t walk the additional 10 steps required to put the cart under the “Please Return Carts Here” sign.

Then last month I thought I had my revenge. I went to our local WalMart and as parked and stepped out of the truck, witnessed some guy leaving his cart behind someone’s van. “AHHA”, I thought. “I’ll let this guy have it good!”

I said, “What’s the matter with you? Leaving a cart behind this guy’s van. You too good to put it away?”

The guy looks at me, smiles, WINKS, and says, “it’ll be OK”, and walks off.

I upped the stakes and said, “Yeah jerk – it’s not YOUR paint job you’re fucking up.”

The guy just kept walking.
This could go into the PIT, but I’m more interested in knowing if inconsiderate clowns that damage or endanger personal property are the norm.

Has anyone else had their car/truck hurt at the mall lately? Or better yet, know of a remedy/recourse?

2

We make our own battles. I don’t usually get upset when I’m at Wal-Mart. I don’t let trivial things bother me though.

3

My wife and I got accused of seriously denting a persons car at a local grocery store. Said store has a downhill parking lot, and parking near the door insures any cart will hit your vehicle. Needless to say, the wind caught one near a cart corral (not IN), and it zoomed over and bashed the hell out of his back right quarter panel. Needless to say, insecurity shows up (the ahem person could have taken two steps to catch the thing, but couldn’t be bothered to stop talking to his buddy). They come over and make a big deal out of how they’re going to call the cops and have us arrested and thrown in jail and sued for massive damages and ruin our lives. My wife was in hysterics, and then I read that Magic sign… “The store does not assume responsibility for damage due to carts.” Bingo, store couldn’t do crap to us, even if it had been our fault. I told her to get in the van, we were leaving. Guy made a big deal out of getting my plate number. I said fine, go ahead. He couldn’t get my address, and had no witnesses to this. Nothing ever happened. :slight_smile:

I did call up and cuss out the manager for that incident. Haven’t had a problem since. Damn rent a fuzz.

4

After having my brand new (used) car for a week, an old lady plowed into me at (you guessed it) Walmart. Luckily (for her) she didn’t do any damage, and only hit the rubber on the wheel. I almost wrang her neck, anyway.

5

I had something happen to me a couple of years ago that I still get a chuckle out of. It was winter time, around Christmas I think, and I was getting ready to back out of my space. I looked over both shoulders to make sure no one else was backing out and then proceded. As I started backing out I almost ran over this chick that was walking down the middle of the aisle in the parking lot. I hit the brakes real quick and stopped and she came up and tapped on my window and says, “You really need to watch where you’re going. You almost hit me.” I looked at her and said, “You’re gonna get hit if you don’t take your hands off my car and get the hell outta my sight.” With that I drove off hoping to run over her toes, but no such luck! She caught me in a really bad mood that day. Other than that little incident I’ve never had any problems. I like my Wal-Mart!

6

I hear you Southern. I feel your pain. I am absolutely anal about the way that I take car of my cars, so when some asswipe sends his cart across the parking lot, I take it personal. My wife knows this and how mad I can get at people. Now I am the most tolerant, patient person in the world but when this happens, I just explode. My wife came home from work one day almost in tears because when she came out of work there was a shopping cart up against the side of my 2000 Intrepid and it had left a good sized ding in an otherwise pristine car. This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil.

7

I’ve been waiting to share this story. Once again the scene is the WalMart parking lot. I pull in to a parking place. There is no car ahead of me, but there is a cart in the space. As I sat in the car waiting for a song on the radio to end before I went in, this woman pulls into the space in front of me. She plows into the cart that was in the spot sending it crashing into the front of my car. I was instantly enraged as I got out of my car. As I stood there fuming, she said to me “hey, I didn’t leave it there” and proceded to walk toward the store, leaving me there agape at how rude and crass this woman was.

I must admit I stooped to her level because I went over and keyed her car 3 complete laps around and then left. Gee, I guess that makes me no better than the rest of the walmart shoppers. Maybe I deserve to shop there.

8

>> I almost wrang her neck

hmmm, wring, wrang, wranged? … hmmm It don’t sound wright

9

wrung. “I almost wrung her neck.”

That’s my opinion.

10

That kind of caught my ear as well, but after a second or two I started to like it. If it’s not a word, it should be.

11

I always park very distant when at wal-mart. The refuse of society that shops there (myself included, duh) necessitates it!

12

In defense of WalMart, yes I shop there, if a store furnishes carts, be it grocery stores or whatever, your car can end up with damage. There are rude, crude people that shop everywhere.

13

I don’t have any specific Wal-Mart horror stories to tell, but I do have sort of a general rant.

Up until about two years ago, we had a single Wal-Mart here in Lexington–not a SuperCenter, mind you, but a little old-fashioned Wal-Mart, without the grocery section and all the other gross excesses. You could get in and out in a relatively small amount of time. No problems.

Then, at about the same time, both an uber-Wal-Mart and a Meijer opened their doors. While this did end Kroger’s grocery monopoly and temporarily lower food prices, it resulted in much shittier service at all of them. Unemployment in Lexington is nearly nonexistent, and there are only so many people willing to work for $6.50 an hour and crappy to no benefits in a retail department store. The Megalo-Wal-Mart has 40 check-out lanes, but I have never seen more than about eight open at any one time. (Meijer is a little better, but it’s a little more out of the way so they don’t have as many customers.)

So what did Wal-Mart do to remedy this problem? Why, they opened another Wal-Mart, of course! Since the city is trying to spur development on Lexington’s North Side, they encouraged Wal-Mart to put yet another Supercenter over there. Now it is even worse. The last time I was in there (hopefully the last time ever), no check-out line had fewer than eight people in it. (If I recall a math lecture I heard years ago, a store is losing money if it doesn’t open a new register when there are more than three people in a line.) It was a Saturday afternoon, and there were six lines open out of the 40. I put down my purchases and left.

I have no sympathy for them. If they wanted more people to work for them, they could just pay them more. Sure, it would cut into the profits, but it’s better than making your customers wait 20 minutes in the check-out line. Unfortunately, people will still shop there, as long as the place is standing. I won’t, though.

Dr. J

14

This one isn’t at Wal-Mart, but at a gas station.

I had gone up to College to pick up some friends for our trip to Omaha. As we were leaving through the ghetto, I needed something to drink, and stopped at a gas station to get something. We all piled out of the car, got our drinks, and got back in the car.

I put the car in reverse and started backing up. About halfway through my backing, this hugemous blob of a human being decides to she needs to walk behind me. Instead of waiting, she just cuts right behind me, AS I’M MOVING, close enough her enormous thighs, in their tights, smoosh across my bumper. Not ONLY does she disregard that I’m ALREADY MOVING, and that there’s an enormous parking lot to walk in, she then walks behind me close enough to brush against my freaking car, and unfurls her lumpy, cottage cheese, old-lady arm flap appendages with their 10 foot long, garish red nails, and WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP hammers the SHIT out of my trunk, and screams "Watch where you’re fcking going, ASSHOLE!" I love my car. You do not TOUCH my car without my fcking permission, let alone beat the hell out of the trunk.

Oh my God. If I had not had passengers, and a deadline, I would have had to run her over, dragging her fat, squishy carcass several miles until she had enough inertia that when I stopped, she slid out into the intersection and was run over by 20 bajillion cars.

Bitch.

–Tim

15

Another gas station anecdote: My tank has been filled. The tank of the van in front of me has been filled, and I’m waiting for it to move. It’s not moving. Somebody pulls into line behind, so I can’t back out. Then the asshole who owns the van parking me in comes out of the mini-mart, looking completely oblivious to the fact that he’s kept two cars stuck in place for at least three minutes, when there were parking spaces less than thirty feet away. KILL.

16

This is a bit on the opposite side but close enough. My vehicle of choice for quite some time is a '73 Ford Ranger. It is a big beast and will take some smacking around. I was at a mall with it and it was parked all by itself as usual, since no one in their right minds parks next to it :slight_smile: heh heh, well I’m coming out from the mall and I’m about 15yards from the car and I watch this probably 96-98 something cadillac come backing out of its space with some 90 year old gerriac that shouldn’t be driving and she floors it out of her spot and puts her back corner right into the center of my bumper. Mind you my truck is a freaking beast and has a huge oversized reinforced bumper with a big ass sticking out trailer hitch. Well her bumper is low enough that it slides right unger mine, and get this!!! First the trailer hitch punches into the back of the car whick is glass all the way across. Goes right through and the car continues to plow into the truck pushing my bumper in the middle back in close to a foot. She stops puts it into drive and here comes the really good part!!! She floors the car and it hangs there for a sec because the trailer ball is stuck punched through her car and finally she rips loose after spinning the tires for a half-second.and drives off, never looking back. Her back end is DESTROYED, if anyone has seen the backs of the newer cadillac cateras or whatever they are solid freaking glass. It is ALL broke out her car has at least a couple grand in damage and her bumper covering was sorta flapping around. I LITERALLY fell on the ground I was laughing so hard. It was the funniest saddest thing I have ever seen in my laugh. I had a couple of friends with and they were freaking out and this lady walked over that saw it and they were all like should we call the cops, did someone get plates, and so on and so forth. After I stopped laughing and could breath again I said why?? Imagine the shit she is going to get in with her insurance and stuff I am sure they stopped covering her. Anyways, afterwords when I got home I slapped a chain on the bumper backed up to a tree and yanked a couple times, yee haw good as new. I still laugh when I think of that one though.

Oh yeah and one time driving the car I found a cart in the side of my car with a little scratch, and this one was at a wal-mart so I got my own revenge. the back side of the lot had a long mowed down hill. So I got in and stuck my hand out the window and pulled the cart along with me one the side holding the front corner. Headed for the back side of the lot got up to about 40 at the end of the lot let go of the car and slammed on the brakes the cart bottom guard thing hit the curb at about 35 probably bent the shit out of it went up in the air about 15 feet probably did about a half dozen forward flips and landed in a flower bed. THAT felt good :slight_smile:

17

It would have been more fun to go into walmart, buy several towels (of crappy quality) and -invert- a shoppingcart onto her hood with towels under it (to avoid scratching) and a note- “I left it here.” The shame of it is, you wouldn’t be able to see her face. On the otherhand, that is the most bizarre excuse for colliding with things in a parkinglot. It just is. I wonder what happens when this lady is driving near trees- she must go through cars like crazy.

18

Ooooh. The mental image is sweet. Mmmmmm.

19

It’s the same way at the WalMart in Cookeville, TN, a college town, small. We go to Wally world for everything cause they have the cheapest prices, but we always end up having to wait in line for just as long as it takes us to get our purchases in the cart. The only things we’ve discovered they dont sell: Kwick-Crete, and screws for cpu covers. I’m from the DC area and the people down there all have the southern accent, so it’s wierd, and they are all so nice to me that I can’t complain about the service cause I don’t have the heart and stop being angry once I speak to anyone :wink:

20

OES, are you going to Tennessee Tech? I did some partying down there and made frequest trips to Wally World for “supplies”!